¶ … lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.
"It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling..."
"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."
Naipaul
Nobel Prize-winning author Naipaul published the story "One Out of Many in 2001." This story was published the same year as the terrorist attacks upon the World Trade Center in New York City. It is no coincidence that he published the story with the protagonist of South Asian, and stereotypically, terrorist descent during this year. The story is a somewhat familiar one, of a man, Santosh, from a foreign (to Americans) country when his life changes. The man he serves and works for receives a transfer to Washington D.C. What is familiar about Santosh's plight is that he is one of millions of immigrants from countries far from the United States that have an intense American dream. Santosh, like many other immigrants, believe the hype about America from afar, and for some reason or another, ending up coming to the country to follow and experience the American dream they have heard so much about and seen so much in the media. What is also familiar about Santosh's story is that upon his arrival, even while in the process of arriving, he is put face-to-face with the extremely harsh, yet very accurate, prejudiced, and difficult reality facing immigrants to America, especially those who fit the most popular racial profile at the time: middle eastern, religious extremist, terrorist. Over the course of the story, Santosh encounters obstacles trying to fulfill his dream and become acculturated. Ultimately, the tone of the story is one that is bittersweet, with some triumphs that sometimes come at the cost of sacrifice of bits of his former self.
One of the points that Naipaul makes with the use of this story with respect to colonialization is that the those who are colonized have a responsibility to...
Naipaul is Indian and Caribbean, specifically from Trinidad & Tobago. There is an ample population of Indians in the West Indies and South American. There are Indians in places such as Trinidad as well as Guyana. At some points subtlely and at some points more directly, Naipaul communicates to readers through this story that those who are colonized do have some kind of cultural responsibility. Furthermore, he communicates that it is the business or job of those who were colonized to construct their own identities, which will now reflect aspects of the indigenous culture as well as aspects of the colonizing culture. This is a story with a theme that includes self-cultivation, self knowledge, and identity formation.
Naipaul overtly communicates the how overwhelming one may feel when pursuing a dream. He shows that dreams can be a sort of positive ache or yearning, but dreamers must be flexible and be available to the possibility that dreams need to change. Dreamers must also be available to the possibility that something that was once considered a dream is something altogether different in reality and outside of our imaginations or unconscious. Perhaps this is yet another message regarding the East's responsibility in the aftermath of colonization. That there is a responsibility, first of all, and that responsibility is to the people who were colonized. We also have a responsibility to ourselves and to our dreams to follow them and see them through. We further have a responsibility to face the consequences or reality of our dreams, especially when they do not align with our original conceptions of the dreams themselves. The East is represented in the figure of Santosh. What Santosh experiences and the personal journey he has, is a microcosm of the plight of many Asians, and Indians or specifically those cultures who may be misjudged as a terrorist from the western perspective. Therefore, Naipaul puts some of his expectations and/or hopes within Santosh as he has hopes…
